Milisuthando Bongela. The Apartheid Files

Tsitsi Dangarembga speaks with the filmmaker and writer Milisuthando Bongela about the personal file as cinematic language that overturns the iconographic legacy of apartheid.

Milisuthando Bongela upholds intimacy as a political possibility for combatting authoritarianism. Through home recordings, she moves inside domestic borders to explore everyday scenes and understand how they convey the ethical foundations of South African society. She employs the intimate gaze as a strategy to make universal what is perceived as situated and specific, and thus to challenge the prevailing imaginaries of South Africa’s history of segregation. The act of de-archiving allows a more complex retelling of history while also opening up new possibilities for understanding the wounds and the fears that are still taking their toll today.

Filmmaker and writer Milisuthando Bongela speaks with one of Africa’s leading filmmakers, Tsitsi Dangarembga, about working with archives, her personal experience of apartheid, and filmmaking in South Africa.